"Amen," Garth said, and both men immediately flinched and put their hands over their faces.
But Garth didn't hit anybody. Instead, he grabbed the front of his twin's blue parka and yanked him up off the rosebush. He unceremoniously marched the man to the parapet, then, still maintaining a firm grip on the front of the man's parka, roughly sat him down on the brick.
My twin started to rise, and I kicked him in the left thigh-not hard enough to do any real damage, but with sufficient force to sit him back down again. "You have to forgive my brother's impatience," I said to the man as he furiously massaged his thigh. "I know he's making a terrible first impression, but he's not really as mean-tempered as he seems. It's just that he gets very crazy about child molesters, and people who protect them. Right now, you and your brother fit into the second category."
"Lies!" the man shouted at me. "Lies! We know who you are! You two are the spawn of Satan! You won't trick us! You won't defeat Christ's legions in the final hour! The second seal has been opened, and you and your brother chose to ride with the red beast!"
"What does he have to say, Mongo?!" Garth shouted over the wind.
"He says we're the spawn of Satan!"
"Tell the prick he's got that right! This guy doesn't want to say anything at all! He must think he can fly! Ask your guy if he thinks his brother can fly!"
"Tell us where the dirt is, pal," I said to the man sitting in front of me. "That's all we want to know; we check it out, and then you and your brother can be on your way. Patton will never know that you told us, I promise you."
"I don't know what you're talking about, spawn of Satan!" The fear and shock in the man's brown eyes had now turned to hate which was so clearly reflected in his twisted features that it startled me.
"Oh? Why were you following us?"
"You can't trick me! I won't tell you anything!"
"Then don't try to tell me you don't know what we're talking about, because you do. At least you know about the dirt. Maybe you don't know about the child, so I'll give you the story. Listen to me carefully: a lunatic by the name of William Kenecky is repeatedly raping and sodomizing a child by the name of Vicky Brown. You babble a lot of the same religious bullshit as Kenecky, but I don't think that either you or your brother molests kids. And you have absolutely no reason to protect Kenecky. We'll find Kenecky and the girl if you'll tell us where the dirt is being stored. You'll take us there, and then you'll see that what I'm saying is true." I paused, sighed heavily. Suddenly I was filled with a great weariness, as if the man's blind zealotry and stupidity formed a great weight that was pulling at my heart, dragging me down. "It's Christmas Eve, man," I continued quietly. "Imagine how you'd feel if she was your kid. Can't you give her a break?"
"Mongo?!" Garth shouted. "What's happening over there?! Do I launch this guy or not?!"
"Keep him on hold!" I shouted back over my shoulder as I kept my eyes on my twin's face. I didn't like what I saw there; the gleaming, crazed look in his eyes could mean that he was beyond threats to either himself or his brother, and thus beyond reason. It frightened me. I said, "Don't you think Jesus would want you to help this child?"
The man shook his head. "It doesn't make any difference if you kill Floyd or me. Soon we'll both be in Paradise."
"Good for you-but that doesn't answer my question. Don't you think Jesus would want you to cooperate with us in stopping a child molester from abusing a little girl's mind and body?"
"You're lying about Reverend Kenecky! He would never-!" He abruptly stopped speaking, but it was too late; the child molester had already been let out of the bag.
"Mongo?! Has he told you where we can find the dirt?! My arm's getting tired!"
I glanced over my shoulder at Garth, and didn't at all care for what I saw. My brother had pushed the twin in the blue parka back over the edge of the parapet, and the only thing that was keeping the man from falling four stories was Garth's grip on the front of his parka. The man's legs pumped up and down, and his fingers clawed at the brick wall he was bent back over. Garth lowered him a little more. I didn't think Garth would drop him-but I had to admit to myself that, under the circumstances, I wasn't absolutely sure. Vicky Brown's plight had him more worked up than I'd ever seen him, and he'd already made it very plain to me that he cared nothing for the rights-and, presumably, the lives-of victimizes or their allies. He had truly lost patience with the evil in the world in the most profound sense; to Garth, evil people were no longer people. And even if he didn't drop dear Floyd intentionally, there was always the chance that his gloveless hands might become stiff and numb in the cold, and lose their grip.
Cold hands just wouldn't make a very good defense at our murder trial-and our being brought up on charges of murder wouldn't do anything to help Vicky Brown.
"Uh, Garth, hold off for a while, will you?! My friend here and I are just getting into a serious chat! Why don't you bring your guy over and join us?!"
For a moment I didn't think he was going to do it. Our eyes met, held. Then he shrugged before abruptly pulling brother Floyd back up over the parapet. He dragged him back across the roof and again sat him down on my rosebush, next to his twin.
"These guys seem to have popped out of the same fruitcake as Valley, Mongo," Garth said easily. "I think I may have to start breaking things in them."
"You hear the way my brother talks?" I said, looking back and forth between the two men, whose faces had suddenly become oddly vacant. "He's the bad guy-but you're in luck, because I'm the good guy. I say, let us reason together." I paused, moved in front of the man in the blue parka. "Floyd, your brother tells me he doesn't believe Reverend William Kenecky would sodomize a young girl. Well, what if he would? Just suppose he would-and is. Just suppose that Garth and I can prove to you that Kenecky is a child raper. Would you help us then?"
The twins looked at each other-with Floyd displaying what might have been a slight frown of disapproval at his brother's talkativeness. But neither spoke.
"What the hell is it that you Nuvironment people are trying to hide that's worth all this aggravation?" I continued, struggling to remain calm and keep my tone even. "Why did Patton have you follow us? What on earth is he afraid we may find out?"
Again, there was no response. The twin in the tan parka had bowed his head again, and appeared to be praying.
"Show them the letter, Garth."
"You show it to them if you want," Garth replied tersely, taking the well-worn envelope containing Vicky Brown's letter out of his pocket and handing it to me.
I removed the letter from the envelope, shielded it from the gusting wind and snow with my body, held it out in front of them. "Is this a lie? Read it."
Neither twin would look at the letter. "We won't be tricked," the man in the blue parka said.
I refolded the letter, put it back in the envelope, and handed it back to Garth as I continued to study the faces of the brothers. Suddenly I felt pity for them. Appeals to reason and Garth's threats were getting us nowhere; I wondered what might happen if I appealed to their madness. Christmas Eve was no time to be beating on people, no matter the reason.
"I can see that the two of you are very devout," I said seriously. I was rewarded with a flicker of interest in their eyes. "Garth and I respect that, but it's difficult for us to understand just what it is you believe. I know it's the millennium and all that, and every thousand years all sorts of people take it into their heads that the world is going to end; it's part of the human condition. But what's interesting about you two is that you seem to be convinced that it's going to happen tomorrow or the next day. What do you know that we don't? If the world is really going to end that soon, maybe Garth and I should start thinking about getting our affairs in order."
"You mock," the twin in tan said. "You don't believe it."
"I'm just curious as to the specifics of what you believe. Is what you believe supposed to be a secret?"
He shook his head. "It's clear for all who have truly taken Je
sus into their hearts."
"What's clear? That the world is going to end?"
"Yes!" the second twin snapped. "Jesus is coming!"
"When?"
"Soon. Very soon."
"How do you know that?"
"Let him who has eyes see. Let him who has ears hear."
"How is the world going to end?"
"In fire," the twin in tan said. "As it is prophesied."
"What's going to happen then? What's on the celestial agenda after the world ends in fire?"
"Those who truly have Jesus Christ in their hearts will be spared, including those who have died before. Those of us who are clean will be swept up to the sky to be with Jesus while demons ravage those of you who have been left behind and who have survived the fire. There will be hell on earth for you. After seven years, Jesus will finally descend to vanquish the demons and establish His kingdom here on earth. We will join Him, and we will live forever. People like you will be dead. And damned."
"So you really believe this nonsense Kenecky has been feeding you?"
Both men had been shivering. Now they stopped, and their eyes flashed. "It's all in prophecy!" the twin in tan shouted. "It's clearly written for all to see! The fact that you have not seen and do not believe is what damns you. Reverend Kenecky has Christ in his heart; when Reverend Kenecky speaks, it is the same as Christ speaking."
"Even you can't believe that Christ wants him to rape little girls-and that's what he's doing. I think you know now that it's true, even if you won't read Vicky Brown's letter. I think you know Vicky Brown-and you certainly know Kenecky. Garth and I wouldn't be up here in the cold chatting with you unless we were absolutely certain that what we say is happening is happening. And you say that a man who screws kids has Christ in his heart? Give us a break."
The twins exchanged uncertain glances, and it seemed to me that each was waiting for the other to say something. I felt a rush of excitement. Mine had certainly been the voice of sweet reason, and I could see by the expressions on their faces that what I said had troubled them; I dared to hope that my words would serve as an antidote to the poison in their heads-at least long enough for one of them to give us the single piece of information we needed to go on. I glanced at Garth, gave a slight nod. Obviously, he didn't share my optimism; he simply shook his head slowly.
"So come on," I continued evenly. "I'm telling you the truth about Kenecky. Where are Kenecky and the little girl? That's all we want to know."
The twin in the blue parka said tightly, "It doesn't matter what's happening now. Next week, it will end. Everything that we have known will end."
I blinked slowly in astonishment. The voice of reason croaked, "It doesn't matter?"
"Floyd's right," the twin in tan blurted. "And even if Reverend Kenecky is doing something to Vicky, it must be God's will. Perhaps the reverend's attention to her is God's gift to the child. You simply don't understand. God may be working for Vicky's salvation through the reverend. What he does with her would be like a sacrament."
The owner of the voice of sweet reason suddenly saw spots swimming in front of his eyes, the result of spiking blood pressure. Suddenly I felt as if I were burning, and then all reason was swept away as rage mixed with loathing and horror and exploded. I screamed something unintelligible and jumped on the man in the tan parka, knocking him backward onto a bed of snow-smothered pachysandra. I ripped off my gloves, but couldn't manage to get my hands around his throat because of his parka. Blind with rage, nauseous with a sick sense of something I couldn't quite identify, I rained blow after blow on his face, and didn't stop even when blood started flowing freely from his nose and mouth. I couldn't stop; while one part of my mind clearly recognized that the man I was sitting on was flesh and blood, another part of me felt as if I were punching a phantom, something unspeakably evil that had plagued the heart and soul of humankind from the time we had learned to walk upright. We had split the atom and soared in space, but all the knowledge we had gained had not been sufficient to slay this evil; the evil embodied in the man I was beating was immune to knowledge, for it spurned reason. I hated this evil and knew that it was too deeply ingrained in the man ever to be expunged. Even as my fists shredded the flesh of the man's face, I somehow felt that I was attacking superstition and stupidity, the things that had broken men's and women's bones in the Inquisition, the things that had caused the deaths of countless men, women, and children in countless wars.
I was a tad worked up.
"You shit-for-brains, rotten, fucking son-of-a-bitch!" I screamed as I grabbed the man's hair and shook his head back and forth. "You tell me where Kenecky and the girl are, or I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
And then Garth's powerful fingers grabbed the back of my parka, pulled me off the man even as I continued to punch and kick at the air. He lifted me up and away, then set me down on my feet-but he kept a firm grip on my coat as I again lunged for the man. The bloody mouth of the twin in tan hung open, and he seemed to be in a state of shock.
"He can't tell you anything while you're punching out his lights, Mongo," my brother said dryly, sounding slightly bemused. "Once you'd abandoned your perfectly rational and perfectly useless approach to these jokers, you should have let me take care of business. You just get too emotional."
"Let me go, Garth!"
"Calm down."
"I am calm!"
"Get calmer."
I stopped struggling, then started with surprise when the man I had been beating on, his face smeared with blood, abruptly sat up and started to shout-at least at first I thought he was shouting, but then realized that he had gone into a kind of trance and, like Craig Valley, was "speaking in tongues." His eyes were wide and out of focus, his head thrown back as he howled at the sky.
Then the second twin, apparently caught up in his brother's ecstasy, started. The man in the blue parka grasped his brother's hand as he screamed, swayed, shouted, and stamped his feet. A chill that had nothing to do with the freezing cold went through me.
Then, still holding hands and screaming, moving in unison as if through some secret means of communication, the two men abruptly leaped to their feet and rushed between Garth and me.
"Hey, what the hell?!" I shouted, grabbing for the man in the tan parka as he hit me in the chest with his elbow and rushed past.
Garth lunged and grabbed for the other twin, and ended up holding an empty blue parka.
Stunned and horrified, Garth and I turned as one, cried out as the twins, still holding hands and shrieking their language which no one could understand, sprinted the short distance across the rooftop garden, jumped up on the parapet, and without hesitation hurled themselves out into the snow-swept darkness that echoed with the bells and music of Christmas Eve.
8
"You two are in a lot of trouble," Detective Lieutenant Malachy McCloskey said as he finally-ten minutes after we had been ushered into his office-looked up from the paperwork on his desk. The man with the acne-scarred face looked as if his chronic sciatica was acting up; he sat at a twisted angle, as if favoring his left buttock. He was unshaven, and his gray hair was rumpled. He'd obviously been rousted out of bed two or three hours before, and he was still missing his bed. Two or three hours was the length of time we'd had to wait after first coming into the precinct station; it confirmed to us that McCloskey had been given the standing assignment of dealing with all things now wrought by the Fredericksons. Levers had been pushed, strings pulled, and Malachy McCloskey, better than most people, would know how easily a man could get ground up in that kind of political machinery.
If Garth felt any discomfort at now being more or less at the mercy of a man who probably hated him, he didn't show it-just as he hadn't displayed any embarrassment or discomfort as we'd sat on the wooden benches outside and he'd had to endure the furtive, curious glances of his former colleagues. Only three men on a shift of twenty-eight had come over to say hello and ask after his-our-health; it was as if they sensed, correctly, that the man
with the full beard was very different from the Detective Lieutenant Garth Frederickson they had known and worked with.
"I'm sorry you had to get out of bed on Christmas Eve, McCloskey," Garth said evenly.
McCloskey shook his head impatiently, ran his right hand over his grizzled cheeks, then scratched his head. "Christmas Eve, my ass," he said in his raspy voice. "It's Christmas Day. My daughter's here from Iowa with my two granddaughters. I really would have liked to see their faces when they open their presents."
"Maybe you can still make it," I said brightly, flashing a broad smile.
McCloskey looked at me for a long time, and he didn't smile at all. "I seriously doubt that, Frederickson," he said at last.
"Come on, Lieutenant; give us a break."
"Give you a break?"
"What do you want from us? You've got our statement-and a very long one, I might add. We're the ones who called the police, and we came over here right away."
"Big deal. You knew you'd probably have been arrested and handcuffed if you hadn't."
"I don't know that at all. You've read our statement; you've probably read it more than once. Garth and I haven't done anything wrong."
McCloskey's black eyes flashed. "Jesus Christ, man, you've-"
"We've been fully cooperative, is what we've been-which is more than I might say of the police. We've been cooling our heels here for better than three hours now."
"You've got to be kidding me. You think you and your big brother get points for calling in and then coming over here? Considering the fact that two men were splattered all over the sidewalk in front of a certain building on Fifty-sixth Street, a building wholly owned by the famous Fredericksons, it's not too hard to figure out where they fell from, is it? You really think you have any choice but to cooperate?"
"We've explained what happened."
"And you really expect us to believe that they jumped from your roof?"
"Yeah. We expect you to believe that."
"Both of them?"
'You've got it. They were linked together, holding hands, when they jumped. Garth and I tried to stop them, but they were too quick for us."
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